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Friday, September 14, 2012

Easy Watercolor Portrait Tutorial

I'm still working on decor for the bare walls of my home. I have lots of family photos to hang, but I wanted something with more color..... so I opted to created some bright watercolors of my son and created a tutorial to share!

Now you may be thinking that this is way too hard, but it is WAY easier than it looks. If you can trace an outline and color it in, you can do this!

Step 1: Find a nice digital photo of your subject with an even amount of light and shadow on the face. This can be kinda tricky. If there's too much light or shadow on the face, you won't have enough definition to make this work. So you may have to try this with several photos to see what works best. Finding the right photo is key!

Step 2: Open the photo in PicMonkey, a free online photo editor. You can use another editor if you like, but I'll explain the next steps in terms of the picmonkey editor.

Step 3: In PicMonkey, select the Effects option on the left sidebar. It's the second symbol down from the top. In Effects, select the Posterize option towards the bottom of the sidebar ( I've circled that one below also).

Step 4: In Posterize, slide the number of colors bar down to 2. It's important to have only two colors here. This project won't work with any more colors or any less. Keep the detail at 80% and the fade at 0%. Then hit apply.

Your photo should look like this now. Only one light shade and one dark shade.

Step 5: Decide on the size of painting you want to make and print out the digital photo in black and white in the size that you desire. I printed mine to fill a whole 8 1/2 x 11 piece of copy paper and it worked well to make an 8 x 10 painting.

Step 6: Once you have your printed photo, flip it over and color over the entire backside with a regular pencil.

You may be wondering why you are doing this, but trust me.... there is a reason. The pencil graphite will help you transfer your image onto the watercolor paper. So fill it in the best you can!

Step 7: Flip your paper over so the photo side is up and place it directly on top of the watercolor paper. You need to make sure the paper doesn't shift or move during the next steps so it may be a good idea to tape it down.

Step 8: With a sharpened pencil, press firmly to trace the outlines of the face. I've outlined in red in the photo below some of the areas I traced to give you an idea.

I traced all the black outlines of the face and then moved down to trace the outlines of the neck and shoulders. Depending on your particular photo, you may want to leave the background out. For this one, it worked best to leave it out.

Step 9: Once you have the whole image traced, take the printed copy off to see the image transferred onto the watercolor paper.

Step 10: Now it's time to add some watercolor! Select a color and carefully start painting inside the lines you traced. Keep your printed copy handy to make sure you are painting in the right spots.

Tip: To give the portrait a more varied look, try adding just a hint of another color on certain areas. I added a touch more red in some areas and left others more orange-y.

Step 11: Fill in the entire portrait and let the paint dry and finally... You Are Done!

This is so remarkable! How did you ever think to do this? They are fabulous! I'm going to give it a try. If I a can be as successful as you, I'm thinking Christmas Presents! Thanks for showing us this!

What a fabulous idea. You have a very inspiring blog. I have just become a new follower. I would love it if you came and visited my blog - http://lpcrafts.blogspot.com.au and if you like it become a follower of my art and craft activities with my kids.

I am lame when I do my linky party- I always rush and never comment, but I HAVE to tell you... this is not only being featured and pinned, but it may be my all-time favorite link up out of thousands of projects over the years. Just FYI. :) xo

This is SO AWESOME! Wonderful tutorial too. I can't wait to try this. Thanks so much for linking up to Creative Thursday each week. I always look forward to seeing what you share. Have a great weekend.Michelle

By now you know how great an idea this is...but let me just add my two cents. This is such a dang cute idea. It is different and fun! Something I could totally see sitting on the mantel in my living room.

What a great idea and an easy to follow tutorial!! Thank you so much for sharing how to do this, I would never have thought of this on my own. I am following your blog now and can't wait to see what else you come up with!

I learned this transfer method to use in general for other pictures, but not incorporated the posterization...adds more drama and artistry. Just FYI, a good light box works well for those having difficulty with all that lead scribbling. Still tape every thing in place!

Thanks for the lovely tutorial. This was my weekend project. :) I loved how they turned out, though. Thought you'd like to see! http://blog.drawingsarah.com/post/39927868891/something-i-worked-on-over-the-weekend

This watercolor art technique is so cool! Especially for those of us who can hardly draw portraits, for a non-artist to make something look really, really good! Thank you for sharing this tutorial.Teresa in Californiahttp://amagicalwhimsy.blogspot.com/

I love this idea. My grandmother worked in the Houston police dept in the 20's she would come home and do this with oils over pictures...she got hooked I think working with police photos spread her passion to me :) love this.susan s

Thanks for posting! that was fun. You really do have to pick the right photo... but even so I'm pretty happy with how mine turned out. By the way, I tried one with THREE colors (I like to break the rules, ha!) and used one more color (it's mainly white/orange/peach) on the portrait.

Judy, any pencil marks that are painted over with watercolor paint won't be able to be erased. But if you pencil marks that are not painted over, you should be able to erase them- as long as they aren't too dark.

As far as pencil marks go, if you know what color you're going to paint with, try using a colored pencil in a similar shade to trace instead of regular pencil. That may reduce the amount of visible lines if you can't erase them all.

This is a great idea! Will be making these for Christmas. Here's some info too... You can save time by using a black piece of charcoal or a pastel instead of pencil to cover the back of your picture. It may leave some stray marks, but they can easily be erased, just be sure to not put extra pressure on your picture when tracing so extra marks will be minimal. And here's some cool back history... I just learned this technique in my 2-D Design class and my professor informed us that this is a VERY old technique, and believe it or not, was the process used to paint the Sistine Chapel!

OMG it worked!!! I was floored by how good these looked. My friend and I had both not used watercolors since we were kids, so it's not like we knew what we were doing or anything, and it still worked!!! THANKS!

I brought my 2-color gif into Illustrator and converted to vector (Live Trace). Gave it no fill and a very thin, light grey, dotted outline, and printed directly onto the paper I was going to paint. My fifth grade daughter painted one, I painted one... it was fun, fast, and fantastic results. Thanks so much for this wonderful project! I am going to prepare outlined "paint by number" pages for my sisters, with pics of their kiddies.

You make it look so simple, I know one needs to have a flare with this kind of art talent. You got it! My mother was the artist in the family. However, I will try your wonderful technic- always up for a challenge. Thank you for sharing

Roopa, I just checked and the Posterize option is still available on picmonkey. It's under the effects option as I described in my instructions. If that doesn't work for you, most online photo editors and software have the posterize effect. You can check out some others and see what they have. Good luck!

I'm trying to do this and when I do the posterize and change the colors to 2, the opposite parts of my photo from yours are dark. The faces are dark and the hair is light. This won't work. Can you tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thanks... so excited to do this

Sorry you are having trouble. So much of how these turn out depends on the lighting in the photo. If the faces are really dark, then they must be in shadow. And if the hair is light, the hair must be in the light. You'll have to play around with the posterize effect with a few different photos to find one that works out. Best of luck to you!

The hardest part really was finding the right picture, especially since my family LOVES a flash, but I did eventually and it turned out wonderfully! I did use carbon paper instead of coloring in the back of the printout though, because that seemed like a lot of work and I prefer the lazy way. ;p

I did this last night with superheroes and they turned out really awesome. I found that when posterizing, if I found a picture I really liked but it had too many shadows or not enough, messing with the brightness/shadows/contrast settings worked pretty well. :D

I am an ESL teacher in China. I want to teach this technique to my adult Chinese students. Could I please get your permission to screen shot your instructions or copy them and hand them out to my students? I will of course put your blog link and name on all the screen shots and information provided.

Without having used photoshop elements myself it's hard to know how to fix your problem. Does it give you an option for the number of colors to posterize? For this to work well you need to set it to 2 colors. If you can't get it to work you can always try the pic monkey website that I linked to in this post. It's free to use!

I tried this with a picture of my sister and I as little kids and I painted my sister pink and me green and I have to say i think it looks really cool. For those of you thinking of doing two or more kids in one picture I think painting each kid a different color looks GREAT!!!

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